Polly has launched a new Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds to pay for two days in studio with John Parker (double bass) and Rastko Rasic in September.

Here Polly explains the project:

I have a great big pile of songs that’s been growing since 2012 and I’m going into the studio in September to record the drums/bass tracks for these with John Parker (double bass) and Rastko Rasic (drums) at Three Circles Barn near Saffron Walden in Essex. I need your help to pay for musicians and studio time. After that, I’ll be tinkering away on the recordings in my shed, building up layers of guitars, pianos, tambourines, melody horns, mandolins, wine glasses, dulcimers, voices, hums and other noises. That part of the process is free. It’s just me and my time.

As time has passed I’ve noticed a theme running through the songs, about the ways in which we pivot daily in our various roles: mother, daughter, father, son, lover, friend, confidante, student, teacher, neighbour, friend. I have been wanting to make these recordings for a long time but I’ve felt uneasy about making an “Album” in the conventional sense, for reasons of family, of life, and of health…. I’ve experienced in myself a resistance to the idea of making a Great Big Statement, and a longing to return to the form of the song, that little perfect crack in the fabric that lets the light in, when it’s right.

What’s really exciting for me are the strength of the co-writes that exist in this pot of songs: work with novelist Laura Barnett and playwright Mark Davies Markham, and musicians Danny Wilson (Grand Drive, Danny & The Champions of the World), David Ford, and Tom McRae, among others.

So I don’t want to make an album in the normal sense this time around; I want to build it up slowly, at my own pace, just releasing the songs one by one to you, dropping them like breadcrumbs, when they are ready. I want to give each song the time and space to resonate, to occupy its own space for a bit. I want the album to build itself slowly in your head. And then, at the end of the process, in about 2 years’ time, I hope to collate together the favourites (yours and mine) into what you might call an album. A vinyl album. We can talk about that part later. This is the first part.

I have just been asked to play a set at the Cambridge Folk Festival. Last time I was there was 2012 (see photo) — now I’m working on a trad folk album it seems like the perfect place to be playing this summer. I’ll be in the Club Tent for a 20 minute set at 1.50pm on Sunday, 5 August. For tickets and more information click here.

On International Women’s Day, I will be taking to the small stage at the beautiful Bloomsbury Theatre in central London (very close to the British Library) with my sister-in-song Edwina Hayes (www.edwinahayes.co.uk) to sing old songs and new, laugh a lot, and possibly cry a bit too — probably with laughter, knowing Edwina. I do hope you can join us….

On Monday this week, I found myself in Bristol to sing two traditional folksongs – ‘Reynardine’ and ‘The Flower of Sweet Strabane’, and to spend time with Chris Molan and a beautiful group of folksong-loving people as part of a BBC2 documentary on Angela Carter.

The production team had caught wind of my research on Carter’s influence from singing folksongs, and so I was interviewed about my ongoing work but also sang a couple of songs for them. It was a wonderful if terrifying experience, but it’s encouraged me to get on and make that trad folk EP I’ve been cogitating on for three years, since my EFDSS bursary in 2015.

The film will be broadcast on BBC2 sometime later in the year; I’ll keep you posted on a TX date when I have it.

I’m just back from five AMAZING days in north Wales, holed up in a beautiful cottage in the Snowdonian hills courtesy of the Chester Literary Festival and Storyhouse, with five other creatives — to write, sing, eat, drink, and most importantly, laugh.

I did burst into tears a couple of times — once when, under the influence, I was sure Salena had moved my chi — and then, to an incredibly sad song about young love and death penned in about 15 minutes by an inspired David Ford. But the rest of it was laughter. And shouting. And rudeness. Foul mouths. Hugs. Food. Wine. Teapot cocktail concoctions. And outpourings of the most intense emotional kind as only we creative nutters can muster.

Here is how I described it to my travelling-home friend Mark Davies Markham as we lost each other at Euston Station.

“So I kept one eye out for you amongst all those rushing hoards
but I didn’t see your black cap nor your toothy grin
so I pulled my collar up and tilted my chin down
and gritted my teeth and braved it out into the
rapids of blacks and greys and leapt into a
black cab, and I now sit on another train
waiting to speed back to the fens,
where I will turn back into a frog-mummy
who secretly goes to her shed every now and again
and turns into a songwriting prince.”

I think it might make a song one day. It was that kind of time, when everything that comes out of your brain is a bit syrupy-golden because of the company you’ve been keeping.